Let me take a few minutes of your time . Kenya is a beautiful place , isn ’ t it ? Opportunities abound for those willing to work hard ; the land where you can be born in a small village , work hard and enjoy your lifetime in lush suburbs of Nairobi .
But we get caught up in that rat race don ’ t we ? The never ending pursuit to get a bigger , flatter TV , a smarter phone , a more expensive car and holidays to those exotic destinations we see on our friends ’ timeline .
While we make sure our children are in elite private school ‘ A ’, that our houses are on the right side of the CBD , while we are sipping our Kshs . 500 mojitos with colleagues at the hottest after work watering holes in the city , our beloved Kenya , our land of opportunity is crumbling right around us .
We the lucky few in this country , who don ’ t earn anywhere near a dollar a day , who have running water in our 3 bedroom apartments , who can line up for terrific Tuesdays and fill our bellies with pizza , we have become consumed by distractions .
We are distracted by the authenticity of Kim K ’ s derriere , by the attention seeking empty “ debes ” on Nairobi Diaries , with odds and bets of Sportpesa , with the ever juicy udaku on Kilimani Mums and with hashtagging our picture perfect lives on Instagram .
But while we have been obsessed with these diversions , we have allowed our country to be governed , dare I say dictated by a select few . The people we have entrusted with power have decided to treat our beloved Republic as their own personal playground .
Do you Middle and Upper class Kenya really know your leaders ? Sure we know who our president is , Vice President , Governor , Senator … those are easy ; they are on TV every other day . But do you know what their ideologies are as men and women or Kenyans or even as leaders ? Do you know what issues they stand for and what they fight for ?
Do you know who your MCA is ? Do you know what an MCA does ? Do you know what the job description of your Women ’ s representative is , or what the Governor in your county is supposed to do ? Have you thought about the devolution we voted for , that was supposed to create county governments to decentralize power and give that power to the people ? But instead has only given a good section of our leaders more opportunities to take what they have not earned .
Let us look at the leaders we freely elected . My mind tries to remember a time in my adult life , where corruption has been this blatant , this audacious , this frequent and on such a massive scale . Millions , billions , yes that ’ s Billion with a “ B ” disappeared seemingly into thin air , in what we fondly like to call scandals . People
‘‘ But while we have been obsessed with these diversions , we have allowed our country to be governed , dare I say dictated by a select few . The people we have entrusted with power have decided to treat our beloved Republic as their own personal playground ’’ that ’ s your money , that ’ s my money ! P . A . Y . E , V . A . T , Road Levies , your hard earned salary , money from that chocolate bar you hurriedly pick up at the supermarket , money from that new Toyota you just imported from Japan , money from the cold beers you enjoy at your local nyama joint .
We pay tax and you the middle class and the upper class pays the largest part of it . You actually pay so much tax that the KRA collected a record 1.001 Trillion … yes that ’ s Trillion with a ‘ T ’, in the financial year 2014 / 2015 . Yes … a trillion Kenya shillings .
Yet somehow our potholes get bigger with every rainy season , our biggest national referral hospital has patients with broken limbs sleeping under the bed , our public primary schools are still waiting for laptops that were promised and millions of Kenyans , even in urban areas have no access to clean running water .
But hey we know these problems right ? They are plastered across the dailies : “ Doctors strike again !” “ 2.5 Billion shillings scandal in Ministry of … take your pick ”, “ KCSE exams leaked !”, “ Security at all time low in Kenya !”
What do you really feel when you read those headlines ? I won ’ t lie , I am guilty of it as well . You mumble that this country is going to the dogs , you skim the article to keep informed and have something to say during polite conversation and continue flipping through the newspaper .
So when billions of shillings disappear , money that we break our backs to earn , why aren ’ t we up in arms about it ? Why aren ’ t you outraged , enraged by these scandals ? Why isn ’ t there a fire burning inside of you when you realize the people you put in charge of the well being of your beloved Kenya do not measure up and are in fact draining us of the little we have .